I'm Cameron's Pal!

I sit and write these little missives of mine, tossing them into the great tubes of the internet, wondering where they land. I have had one or two people consider what I say worth pondering, repeating, and commenting upon, and that is more than I could ask for. It seems, though, that some people want more. As I wrote yesterday, Cameron at the blog "Magic Valley Mormon" took umbrage with what he feels is my half-hearted apology from Sunday. I explained, carefully and completely, why I took the position I did. That wasn't enough, because it didn't address the issue for Cameron. He wanted to discuss the whole "Gathering of Eagles" thing - is any issue as dead or irrelevant as that silly little faux-group and their opera bouffe counter-demonstration? - but I insisted that it was just one part of a much larger whole. In fact, I left a comment on his blog, which I reproduce in whole below before he deletes it:

I am so glad you are willing to read what I wrote, even though you completely missed the point. I ignore what you have to say not because of the Gathering of Pigeons, but because that is just one instance where you give aid and comfort to the enemies of the Constitution who currently reside in the Executive Office of the President. It is part of a larger whole, just as the USA purge is part of a larger whole. One cannot understand one part without taking the whole stinking, rotten mess that is the Bush Administration into account.
Again, you want to be taken seriously, apparently. You want to engage with me. Fine. Accept that there is abundant evidence that Bush Co. is rotten to the core, and maybe we can move one from there. Until that happens, until you recognize that I am unmoved by a bunch of photos of radicals being nasty and adolescent, until you admit that, perhaps, our country is in a state of disarray, I doubt we have much to talk about.

March 30, 2007 2:12 PM

We are at loggerheads because he wants to talk about the burning of an American flag and the effigy of a soldier. I refuse to even give this any serious consideration because to do so is already to concede that his position has any intellectual, political, or moral weight at all. He accuses me of throwing a tantrum, but in fact, the tantrum is all his, because I am not discussing what he wants to discuss the way he wants it discussed. I refuse to play his game, and he may not like it, but there's not much I can do about that. One either insists that the entire structure of public debate has fundamentally changed, and that the rules are no longer set by those who want us to acknowledge the legitimacy of what is illegitimate, or one has already lost.

I am honored that he considers my views worthy enough to discuss. He is welcome to come here as often as he wants, to comment as often as he wants. Until and unless he understands that the rules are different, however, he might as well be shouting into an empty well, because we just won't have that much to talk about.